~ Articles

The Transforming Power of Positive Thinking

By Russell Morison
The Advocate magazine

A positive attitude to life means a transformed life. Many of us would like our lives transformed, while we fail to advert to this means of managing it. The point stands out clearly in the example of accident victims who are brought to hospital.

A reasonable expectation about how long a person would stay in hospital with an injury would be that the more serious the injury the longer the stay in hospital.

There could be truth in this in individual cases. But once the larger picture is examined the truth is different, as came out in the study of 200 victims of accidents.

Statistically, the seriousness of the injury turned out to have no significance at all in forecasting the length of time the victim would remain in hospital. In fact, medical grounds accounted for only 17 per cent of the period spent in hospital by people injured in accidents.

This is very surprising, and raises the question about how to account for the rest of the time. It means, for example, that when medical insurance is claimed to cover the expense of the treatment, the larger part of the payment is covering matters that are not medical.

Then what are they? In general, the patient’s frame of mind.

If the picture looked at is a little larger still, taking in the time off work even after a return home fro hospital, there is more surprise.

Prof. Frey is head of the psychology department of Kiel University. He and his team interviewed 500 accident victims on the day of their arrival in hospital to assess the psychological characteristics of the person. Each was then followed through the hospital and post-hospital period until they returned to work, and their psychological and medical conditions compared with the time each one took for this.

There are people who blame themselves for everything. They feel guilty all the time.